Continuing the Journey with Reading Partners D.C.
Photo Source: Reading Partners
If you’re familiar with our origin story, you know that Better to Speak: The Book Drive was our founding initiative. For this program, we partnered with Reading Partners D.C. and enlisted the support and contributions of Black children’s book authors from across the U.S.
Reading Partners D.C. provides local students with literacy tutoring with the help of volunteer tutors who work with them one-on-one to help improve their reading skills. After The Book Drive 2018, our founder Kési Felton was a volunteer tutor at H.D. Cooke Elementary near Howard University, and she can vouch for the fact that Reading Partner’s work has a clear and transformative impact on D.C. students.
Fast forward – we are happy to share that this past summer, Kési joined the Reading Partners D.C.’s Young Professionals Board and will be serving with them this academic year (21-22)!
The Young Professionals Board’s purpsose is to help Reading Partners D.C. meet its programming, fundraising and planning needs as a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the literacy rate among local students.
“I am passionate about this mission because Reading Partners put me on a journey of involvement in the fight for literacy equity. This journey has directly influenced Better to Speak’s impact to increase the amount of positive Black representation in literature and the representation of diverse tutors that help Black and brown students.”
Kési Felton, Founder and Head of Storytelling + Strategy at Better to Speak
This year as an RPYP board member, Kési will be raising money for Reading Partners D.C. If you’d like to learn more and donate, you can find her fundraising page here.
With your support, Reading Partners D.C. can continue to do this critical work of reaching more students, recruiting more volunteers and increasing partnerships with more local schools!
You can also support Reading Partners D.C. through Better to Speak’s “The Right to Read” initiative. The campaign aims to bring awareness to inequitable access to literacy and education, and amplify the voices and stories of community members and organizations like Reading Partners D.C. who are working to address the issue.
